owing to Vaillant, who was acquainted with German scientific socialism. Thus we can understand why, in the economic field, many things were left undone which, according to our present conceptions, should have been done by the Commune. The most difficult thing to understand is, indeed, the sacred respect with which the Commune reverently stopped before the portals of the Bank of France. This was also a portentous political error. The Bank in the hands of the Commune—that was worth more than ten thousand hostages. It would have meant the pressure of the entire French bourgeoise upon the Versailles Government in the interest of peace with the Commune. But what is still more wonderful, is the number of correct things done by the Commune, in spite of its make-up of Blanquists and Proudhonists. Of course, the Proudhonists are responsible for the economic decrees of the Commune, for those that are praiseworthy as well as for those that are not, while the Blanquists are responsible for the political acts of commission and omission. And in both cases the irony of history would have it—as is usual when doctrinaires take the helm of the State—that both the ones and the others did the reverse of that which the doctrines of their school prescribed.[1]
- ↑ In the "Appendix" to his French edition of the papers published here in English, Charles Longuet takes exception to this statement of Engels concerning the composition of the Central Committee and the Commune. The fact is, however, that although Longuet can claim that he was a member of the Commune and might, therefore, be supposed to know whereof he speaks in this matter, Engels' view is absolutely correct. Longuet classifies men, as a statistical clerk might do, by the organizations to which they respectively happened to belong; whereas Engels judges of them, as a philosopher must do, by their actual spirit and tendencies. The revolutionary spirit that dominated the Commune was essentially "Blanquist"; while the prevailing economic notions, among the comparatively few who had any, were "Proudhonist." Of clear-minded, thorough "Collectivists" there was only a handful in the whole city of Paris. That with intellectual elements economically so weak, and under circumstances so unfavorable to
